Migrants coached by people smugglers how ‘to lie about nationality’ | UK | News
People smugglers are alleged to be distributing secret recordings of fake asylum interviews to teach migrants to lie about their nationality and gain refugee status in Britain.
The reported audio file shows an Iraqi man posing as a stateless Kuwaiti minority during an Interior Ministry interview. The Express understands he secretly recorded the exchange and passed it on to smuggling networks, who then passed it out via an encrypted Telegram channel popular with migrants gathering on the coast of northern France waiting to cross the Channel.
The recording is said to show how the man worked through a prepared narrative, claiming he was imprisoned and tortured in Kuwait as a Bidoon, a stateless Arab group whose members were denied citizenship when Kuwait gained independence, before going through a series of written fact-finding questions designed to verify his alleged origins.
The term bidoon comes from the Arabic word meaning “without” and refers to stateless people, mostly descendants of nomadic tribes, who were excluded from Kuwaiti citizenship in 1961 and have faced discrimination ever since.
nationality exchange
According to The Telegraph, the practice has a name at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Authorities call this “citizenship exchange”; the deliberate adoption of a false national identity from a country where asylum claims are routinely approved in order to maximize the chances of receiving protection.
The tactic is spreading. An insider told reporters that since the outbreak of the Iran war, a growing number of immigrants are presenting themselves as Iranian citizens fleeing the conflict.
Eritrea is another favorite cover. Nine out of ten asylum applications to Eritrea were approved last year, making it an attractive identity. The problem, insiders say, is that basic internet research is often enough to pass the citizenship test.
“I can say I’m Eritrean, I’ve lived in Eritrea for 10 years, I know the flag and I had a Google, it’s pure madness,” the Telegraph source said. “It’s hard to distinguish between these nationalities. An Afghan might say he’s Iranian, an Iranian might say he’s Iraqi, and so on. Then all you have to do is Google your nationality questions.”
Kuwaiti figures tell their own story. Two years ago, 276 asylum applications were made by people claiming to be Kuwaiti citizens. By 2025, this number had quadrupled to 1,210; this is a record.
How authorities are responding
The asylum process includes an initial screening followed by a formal interview with a social worker and an interpreter; During this meeting, applicants explain their cases and are asked questions about the homeland they request.
To counter false allegations, the Home Office insists it commissions trained linguists to detect inconsistencies in the way people speak, analyzing vocabulary, idioms and regional accents to assess whether an applicant’s language matches his or her claimed nationality.
Biometric data is claimed to provide a second line of defence. Anyone applying for stateless person status must submit their fingerprints and other biometric information within 45 working days.
If this data has already been recorded in a safe country that the applicant passed through on his way to the UK, authorities can cross-reference the records to establish whether a change of citizenship has occurred prior to arrival.
